Valerie Tripp

Valerie Tripp says she became a writer because she's a daydreamer and because she loves to draw on her experiences and her memories. While writing the Felicity stories Valerie visited Williamsburg many times. Also, memories of a childhood trip to Colonial Williamsburg inspired her. During that visit, Valerie and her sisters went to an evening concert at the Governor's Palace and even tried out the stocks! In 1997, Valerie visited Colonial Williamsburg again with her 10-year-old daughter, Katherine. The visit was a terrific opportunity for Valerie and her daughter to roll hoops, take a carriage ride, visit the Governor's Palace, and imagine what life was like in Felicity's world.

Copyright © 2002 by Pleasant Company. All rights reserved.

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Connie Porter

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Connie Porter is the author of ALL BRIGHT COURT, IMANI ALL MINE, and the Addy books in the Pleasant Company's THE AMERICAN GIRLS Collections, which has sold more than 3 million copies. Porter was a fellow at Bread Loaf and was named a regional winner in Granta's Best Young American Novelist contest. She currently lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.

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Janet Beeler Shaw

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Janet Shaw is the author of the new Kaya™ series in The American Girls Collection®, as well as the Kirsten® series and short stories. To create Kaya's stories, Ms. Shaw worked closely with many Nez Perce tribal members, advisors, and elders in Washington and Idaho, who shared with her the stories and legends of the Nez Perce people that helped her envision Kaya's world in 1764.

Before she began writing for American Girl in 1985, Ms. Shaw had established a successful career as a poet and writer of fiction for adults. Her fiction has appeared in national magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, and McCall's and her poems and stories have also been widely anthologized, including two stories in The Norton Anthology of Short Stories.

A Missouri native, Ms. Shaw attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she won Mademoiselle magazine's Short Fiction Contest in 1959. She later earned a master's degree in English at Cleveland State University.

After raising her three children, Ms. Shaw began writing again, and in 1973 the Cleveland State Poetry Forum published her first book of poetry, HOW TO WALK ON WATER. A second poetry book, DOWRY, was published in 1978 by the University of Missouri Press. In 1984, the University of Illinois Press published Ms. Shaw's first collection of short fiction, SOME OF THE THINGS I DID NOT DO, to critical acclaim. In 1987, Viking Penguin published her first adult novel, TAKING LEAVE.

Janet Shaw lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her husband and their two dogs.

Copyright © 2001 by Pleasant Company. All rights reserved.

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Janet Beeler Shaw - Ask The Author

Author Janet Shaw responds to questions about KAYA and her stories.

Q: How would you describe Kaya's personality?
JBS: Kaya's personality combines daring, courage, strength of spirit, and a determination to do right. The rigors of her active life have made her strong, and the self-discipline she's learned gives her confidence, even in dangerous situations. Kaya faces many hardships as her stories progress, but overcoming those hardships only strengthens her spirit even more. Many times she is humbled by her mistakes, but I admire her fierce determination to become a better person-one who thinks of others before herself. Always, she is guided by the wisdom of her elders and her respect for spiritual powers.

Q: What do you hope Kaya's stories will do for young girls today?
JBS: I hope that by looking at the world through Kaya's eyes, our readers will learn to understand, appreciate, and respect a rich and intriguing way of life very different from their own. Kaya and her people were strengthened by their powerful sense of community and their relationship with the world around them. They prized justice, independence, bravery, generosity, and spirituality-enduring values we badly need in our lives today.

Q: How did you prepare yourself to write an accurate and compelling story about Kaya and the Nez Perce people?
JBS: The Kaya stories are the written record of my own education in the Nez Perce people, their culture, and their beautiful country. When I began this work five years ago, the only thing I was certain of was that I knew very little about the Nez Perce people. My ignorance humbled me as I faced all that I would have to learn in order to make Kaya and her world believable to our readers. I settled in to read and study the materials that Pleasant Company's historical researchers were compiling-a long list that now numbers more than 90 books and articles. I studied photographs and made sketches of tools, jewelry, saddles, and tepees, and I visited museums all over the Northwest. But it wasn't until I met the Nez Perce people themselves that my true education began-and the world of black and white print began to change into color.

The eight-person advisory board led the way, introducing me to Nez Perce men and women, young and old, with stories of all kinds-personal stories, family stories, legends, and tales-as well as all kinds of special knowledge to share with me. The men spoke of hunting, fishing, and horses. The women described how to tan hides, weave baskets, and their many other skills. But both the women and the men talked a lot about their families, too; they spoke of their parents and grandparents, their children and grandchildren. Through their stories I was able to picture a world in which all the children are like brothers and sisters, and every age group has important skills needed by all the others. Many of those stories found their way into the books about Kaya.

They also took me to so many places in their beautiful country! My travels followed the routes taken by Kaya's band as they journeyed from hunting and fishing grounds to berry-picking and root-gathering fields. As I explored, I learned many things. But it wasn't until I saw a herd of Appaloosa horses appearing out of the dappled shadows, and a spotted mare and her new foal stepped away from the others, that I felt I was truly seeing through Kaya's eyes. It was then that all the experiences given to me came together. I believed that I could take what I'd learned and make it my own. I believed that I could make Kaya come alive in the imaginations of our readers.

At every step along the way, the members of the advisory board gave me guidance and corrected my mistakes. If these stories portray Nez Perce life truly and accurately, it is because of the dedicated attention they have given to the text, illustrations, and products. The authenticity of Kaya's world is their gift to all of us. The Nez Perce say that there is more honor in giving than in receiving, and in this case the honor is theirs indeed.

Copyright © 2001 by Pleasant Company. All rights reserved.

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